


A Quiet Prequel: Breathing Space

by gallifreyburning



Series: A Quiet 'Verse [1]
Category: Gallifrey (Big Finish Audio)
Genre: F/M, every time I relisten to this series I find more places to shoehorn shippy moments between canon, wartime fluff
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-05-10
Updated: 2019-05-10
Packaged: 2020-02-29 15:10:35
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,467
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/18780778
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/gallifreyburning/pseuds/gallifreyburning
Summary: A prequel to "A Quiet Heart" set duringGallifrey 3.2: Warfare, after the skirmish with Darkel and her troops at the Academy. A little bit of medical care and an accidental stroll around school grounds, in the lull between conflicts.





	A Quiet Prequel: Breathing Space

Narvin walks into the makeshift medical station, a converted stellar manipulation classroom, fully intending to demand Elbon’s immediate attention for his wounded shoulder. He has an absurd amount of work to see to, after all, to secure the Academy as Romana’s new rebel stronghold, and no time to sit around being idle. But then he sees the dozen cots full of dying and wounded … comrades? Fellow soldiers? Not friends, certainly; he hasn’t made friends, even if he knows each of these injured Time Lords by name, because they’re assets in Romana’s dwindling ranks. But today’s skirmish with Darkel and her soldiers has dwindled them even further.

None of them have a chance of regeneration, without succumbing to the Dogma virus. He’s staring at a room full of death – death of the soul and of the mind, without hope of renewal. The death of everything that makes an individual who they are, and turns them into a mindless drone.

The realization, and the sight of so many severely injured, stoppers Narvin’s demands before he even makes them. His own injuries from the bomb in the Artron Forum, and the incident in escaping from the Anomaly Vault, still haven’t fully healed. He’s been holding back a migraine through sheer force of will for the last sixteen spans. At the sight of the full medical station in this abandoned classroom, and the seeping realization of how closely death has stalked him personally these last few days, his willpower finally collapses and his head floods with pain.

He finds an empty cot and sits on it to wait, staring at his filthy hands.

Leela’s cut to excise the bug-bomb was a clean one, in spite of her blindness. But it was also deep, and the bleeding shows no sign of stopping on its own. Amber blood has soaked down his sleeve and spattered across the backs of his fingers. Red dust has worked its way beneath his fingernails. He hasn’t changed out of his torn robe, and he can feel more blood drying against his back, plastering the tattered fabric to his skin. His shoulder stings terribly, and every time he moves the wound feels like it might rip open even more, like the sleeve on his robe.

Commander Hallan is laid out on the cot next to him, already tended to. Medi-gel glistens across a staser wound and a few cuts on his face. He seems stable, to Narvin’s untrained eye, but he hasn’t twitched a muscle or woken up since Narvin arrived. He’s either in a healing coma, or worse than he appears.

“Here he is,” someone says, and Narvin cranes his head to find one of the medical assistants leading Leela toward his cot. In her blindness, she moves with the same tense caution she’s exhibited since the bomb a week ago in the Artron Forum.

Narvin goes through multiple simultaneous emotions – concern for whatever emergency has no doubt compelled Leela to seek him out, dread at having to navigate another conversation chock full of her savage colloquialisms, and a strange tickling anticipation that he doesn’t even know how to categorize. As the medical assistant ushers her closer, his mouth moves a few times as he tries to figure out which words will keep this interaction as brief and efficient as possible.

“Commander Hallan, you have a visitor,” the assistant chirps, steering Leela past him without a glance.

_Ah._

Narvin’s mouth snaps closed and he returns his attention to the fascinating constellation of blood-splatter across his right hand as Leela settles at Hallan’s bedside, a few meters away. Hallan stirs at the sound of his name, his eyes fluttering open.

“Leela,” he croaks, the admiration in his voice plain. “What are you doing here?”

“I came to see –” she hesitates, and amends “– came to make sure you were well.”

“Thanks to you,” Hallan replies. “You saved my life. I owe you a debt.”

“You would have done the same for me,” she replies warmly, reaching out in Hallan’s general direction. He hesitates a moment, and then takes her hand. “I have grown too used to standing alongside you in battle. Anyway, Romana never would have forgiven me if I left you out there to be regenerated into a Dogma victim.”

As they continue to chat in low tones, discussing the battle and Darkel and her Dogma-converted foot soldiers, Narvin finds himself studying Leela’s profile. A smudge of ash mars her cheek from the battle, and her fingers have blood on them much like the spatter on his own hands. But the blood on her human hands is decidedly not human – it’s Time Lord, dark orange instead of crimson – because she has spent the whole of today saving others.

At this point in the conflict, Narvin and Hallan have become Romana’s most crucial tactical advisors and linchpins of her overall strategy. Today, in the space of half a span, they both nearly died; regenerated, actually, which would be worse than death, with the Dogma virus rampaging around the planet. If Leela hadn’t insisted Hallan be carried to safety, he’d be a foot soldier fawning after Pandora right now. If she hadn’t cut the bug bomb from Narvin’s shoulder, he’d be pieces of flesh splattered across the Academy ruins.

Interesting, really, that she saved him with her knife. A primitive creature saved his life with such a primitive weapon, no one on Gallifrey even carries such a thing anymore. She was swift and decisive, and clever in her own human way, and in the space of one battle she singlehandedly rescued Romana’s rebellion. Twice in less than a week, she’s saved his life – or maybe it’s been three or four times. He was unconscious during the journey to Elbon’s medical station in the Outlands, and has only heard tell of her bravery.

Narvin is under no illusion that Leela saved his life out of personal sentiment or feelings of friendship. During the seven missions Romana has sent them on together, over the last month or so, Leela made it clear that she only tolerates his existence, as he tolerates hers. Their loyalty to Romana is the only thing they have in common.

And yet.

“A _hem_. Coordinator?” Narvin starts, blinking as he drags his focus to the here and now. He finds Hallan staring pointedly at him, and realizes that he, in turn, has been staring quite openly at Leela. Hallan continues, “Are you all right?”

Leela’s head swivels toward him, her blind eyes aimed in the general direction of his shoulder. “Narvin is here?”

“I’m fine, Commander,” Narvin says, turning his gaze at anything but Leela. His head swims with pain, aching and exhausted, and for some reason his cheeks have turned warm. He finds himself stammering, “Just had a – I mean – my head injury. It’s still bothering me. I seem to have lost focus for a moment.”

“Did you indeed?” Hallan replies, lifting an eyebrow and delivering a witheringly knowing stare.

He must be delusional, if he thinks he knows something. Anything at all, really. Hallan is quite tedious, after all.

“You are here for treatment as well, Narvin?” Leela asks. “I did not think I cut you so deeply. Or is it still your head?”

“I have too much work to do, I can't waste time here. I'm going to find Elbon,” he mutters in reply, pushing to his feet. The effort sends a burst of pain through his shoulder, and he closes his eyes for a long moment, waiting for his head to settle down. Meticulously keeping his footsteps steady, he strides away to leave Hallan and Leela in peace.

 

* * *

 

The ruined Academy hums, and Leela cannot sleep.

Even during her time as an instructor here, she never lived on campus. Her quarters remained in the Presidential Palace with Romana, as befitted a presidential bodyguard. She doesn’t know what the Academy sounded like at night before the civil war, but now the makeshift shields Narvin erected around these buildings fill the air with peculiar sounds. They whine in her hunt-trained ears, and in her sleeplessness she turns over in bed for the dozenth time this span.

She and Romana have taken up residence in the dormitory wing, alongside the rest of Romana’s followers. Romana chose this room, which belonged to a pair of Monan students before they were evacuated from the Citadel. Leela helped her arrange the beds together, so they could share as they often did in the Presidential Palace. This is the first time Leela has lain side by side with Romana since Andred’s death – Andred’s _murder_.

A few days ago she told Narvin she didn’t harbor anger at Romana for what she did, and she meant it. Leela has gone through the agony of being possessed by another being – having her mind and body dominated, watching her hands do things that were beyond her ability to control. She’s been crowded out of her own skull and had her body used as a marionette more times than she cares to remember. Leela understands full well that Romana’s hands might have taken Andred’s life, but it was not Romana’s will or desire that made her act.

Even so, this is the first night they’ve shared a bed since it happened, and Leela cannot stop noticing the weight of Romana’s one hand on her hip, and the second twitching against her pillow. For the first time she feels a glimmer of gratefulness for her blindness, because she doesn’t have to look at the hands that took Andred’s life.

Even though she doesn’t resent them, she isn’t quite ready to be embraced by them yet. So she extricates herself from Romana and the bed, and she goes scouting.

Following the hum of the shields, she makes her way along the outer perimeter of their fortified school, noting the various locations of fallen walls and barricaded furniture. She’s on the far side, away from the sleeping fighters and guards on lookout duty, when the quiet footsteps that have been following her stop.

She recognized the sound of Narvin’s footfalls a while ago – he has a certain cadence to his stride, the way his foot strikes heel-to-toe, and beneath the smells of crumbling mortar and blood that pervade the Academy she has scented the particular starch he uses on his robe. After going on half a dozen missions with him over the last few months, and carrying him halfway across the Capitol after the Artron Forum bomb incident, that starch scent seems to have permanently lodged in her nose and her mind. She catches wind of it everywhere, nowadays.

At his halt, she also stops and turns around to face his general direction. Is he hiding? Standing in the open? She doesn’t know. “You have decided you are finished spying on me tonight, Narvin?”

He shifts from foot to foot and clears his throat. “I wasn’t following you. I was monitoring the perimeter, testing my shields.” This proclamation is followed by a tapping noise, the sound of his fingernails hitting a datapad.

“Were you,” Leela says, no hint of a question in her tone. “Did you find the weakness two hundred meters back? The shield sounded different there, it sang at a higher pitch.”

“I found that too,” he replies, his surprise evident. “But it was two hundred sixteen meters back.”

She snorts and rolls her eyes, turning around and resuming her stroll. “Come along,” she calls over her shoulder. “If we are walking in the same direction, we might as well walk together.”

After few moments, he reluctantly jogs to catch up with her. “I suppose you’re out here to check the shields, too, and find fault in my work?”

“I am mapping terrain,” she replies. “The Academy is familiar ground, but I did not see the damage it suffered before I lost my sight. I need to know which walls have fallen, and where piles of rubble or craters lie, so when the time comes to defend this place I can do it well.” A pause. “Your technical work is rarely weak or inadequate, Narvin. I doubt we will find many faults.”

He walks silently for exactly ten paces, as if he isn’t sure how to reply.

“Did Elbon see to your shoulder?” she asks.

“It wasn’t bad, just needed a touch of dermal regeneration gel. The cut you made was practically of surgical quality, he said.”

She laughs. “He did not.”

“Well. Perhaps he phrased it differently.”

“I will guess: he said the cut was adequate for a blind ape with a prehistoric blade.”

“Maybe something like that,” he admits, with a tapping sound as he attends to his datapad. “Your prehistoric weapon and your primitive technique saved my life, and the lives of everyone within a twenty meter radius of that bug-bomb. Elbon himself could not have done better, given the circumstances.”

“Mmm.” This sort of compliment from Narvin is a rare thing, and so Leela quashes her instinct to argue with him. Not that there’s really much to argue about this evening, on this surprisingly pleasant walk in this peaceful corner of the Academy, but getting a rise out of him is always enjoyable sport. “How long do we have here, before Pandora and her people find a way through your shields?”

“Two weeks, on the outside. But that’s a generous estimate. More likely a week.”

“What do you suppose we shall do, then? Will we go back to the Outlands?”

“Good grief, I hope not,” he says, a desperate edge to his voice.

“It is too dusty and dirty for you?” she says. She knows full well his most recent memories of that place are ones of agony, of time spent half-conscious on the verge of death.

“I haven’t the shoes for hiking in that kind of terrain,” he replies deadpan, playing along. “I lost them when I abandoned my flat in the CIA Tower, to join Romana’s crusade. We’ll have to stick it out here in the Citadel.”

“If we have to hide in the Outlands again, I shall lend you my boots,” Leela says. She hears him shift closer, turning to study her as if genuinely contemplating the idea.

“They’d be terribly unflattering on my calves, I’m afraid I’ll have to decline your offer,” he says, his tone still as dry as the Outlands themselves. Leela laughs softly, surprised and delighted by his humor. He taps his datapad a few more times as he continues to scan the shields, and then stops walking altogether. “The phase variance is out of sync here, I need to make adjustments.”

“Very well. Find rest tonight, Narvin, before daylight comes and more of Pandora’s trouble along with it.” She continues on, making her way back toward Romana, and leaving him to fiddle with his defenses.


End file.
